STARKVILLE – Mississippi State head coach Chris Jans didn’t hide his frustration on the Hailstate radio broadcast after a 96-80 loss to Iowa State last week. After climbing the steps of the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, he spoke at length about the lessons that needed to be learned from the humbling loss. 

“The only thing we can do right now is get better from this,” he said. “We’ve got to learn these lessons and apply them as coaches, and the players have to be receptive. … Everybody learns when they lose. I’d rather win and learn, and that’s not an option for us right now. We have to have growth from this game and what just happened to us.”

The team got back to Starkville and back to work, beating Southeastern Louisiana 75-68 to improve to 2-1 on the year. Jans liked what he saw from his group for stretches of the game on Saturday, but he saw parts, especially the final stretch, that “spoiled” the good things they had done. 

“I did see a lot in response,” Jans said. “Unfortunately, we practice harder and better than we did in parts of our last game, which is certainly not what you want. I don’t think anybody wants that; players don’t want that, fans don’t want that, coaches don’t want that. … Opponents want that.”

Today, the Bulldogs face Kansas State, a team that has averaged more than 90 points per game through its first four contests. The Wildcats are 4-0 but have had to sneak past their last two opponents in high-scoring, one-possession games. 

It’s another opportunity to face a team closer to the caliber that awaits the Bulldogs in the SEC, and the kind of early test the team needs to continue figuring out who they are. 

“We’re a work in progress,” Jans said. “Like I would expect us to be, to be honest. … Certainly, there are a lot of teams out there that have a lot of newness, that are playing their best. We’re not playing our best. I feel like there are times where we’re better in practice from a competitive standpoint, from the execution standpoint, than we are in games.”

The point about practice, and the intensity the Bulldogs brought back to Starkville after the loss to Iowa State, was framed positively by Jans, but he is still looking for that intensity to translate under the lights when it matters most. 

“We’ve got to fix it,” he continued. “I want us to play like we practice, because I’ve said before, this is the best practice team I’ve had thus far, since I’ve been here. Usually, that’s a good sign eventually, but for whatever reason, as physical, as competitive as they are most of the time in practice … they’re not what you would think where now we’re going to play together, to do it to someone else. … We’ve got to figure out how we can transfer practice into games a little bit better.”

The intensity will have to be there in Kansas City today, or the Bulldogs risk another night of chasing from behind. 

K State’s top scorer, P.J. Haggerty, a familiar face from Memphis last season, is averaging 26 points per game with 5.8 assists. He leads a versatile backcourt that also includes Nate Johnson, a 6-3 guard who also leads the team in rebounds per game. 

The Bulldogs already came up short in their first Power Four test against Iowa State and will face a similar road environment as Sioux Falls in Kansas City; still a neutral venue, but the expectation of a hostile crowd given the proximity to Manhattan. It’s the kind of environment that can replicate a tournament atmosphere, which is what Jans is aiming for, but for now, the aim is simply to figure out what his team is made of. 

“We’re still trying to find what our identity is going to be,” he said. “I know what I want our identity to be, and it’s my job to try to get them to grab hold of it and buy into it, and we’re not there yet. We’re just not there yet, and we’re going to keep charging forward and working our tail off, and they’re going to keep doing the same, and hopefully in short order, that identity will be formed and everyone will see it. Until then, as you can see, we have a lot of struggles in games.”

The Bulldogs will tip off against the Wildcats at 8:30 p.m. and will face either Nebraska or New Mexico on Friday. Both games will stream exclusively on Peacock.